Thursday, July 17, 2014

From CNBCAuthorities unveiled criminal charges Thursday accusing seven people,
including a banking executive once married to a star of "The Sopranos,"
of running a $300 million stock manipulation scheme that cheated elderly
and other investors. Abraxas "A.J." Discala — the CEO of merchant
banking firm OmniView Capital Advisors and former husband of Jamie-Lynn
Sigler, who played Meadow Soprano on the hit HBO series — was charged in
an indictment unsealed in Brooklyn, New York, with 10 criminal counts
including securities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy. Discala, 43, and
the other defendants were accused of using "pump-and-dump" and other
illegal tactics to artificially control prices and trade volumes in four
companies from October 2012 to July 2014.

Only 3 of the defendants appeared today in Brooklyn Federal Court: Ira Shapiro, Victor Azrak, and Craig Josephberg. All defendants were given bail and were released. Judge Robert Levy presided over the arraignments. Turns out the Judge knows my work from the 1987 Billie Boggs case, he was Bogg's attorney and I covered that case.

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Clipper owner Donald Sterling in court in his attempt to save his stake in his NBA Team.

art, observation and story below.

Bill Robles observations:

Donald Sterling,Tuesday July 8 this afternoon, just before taking the witness stand, in his trial. His wife is sitting across the aisle on the opposing side. He was most interesting, funny, and I think dominated the courtroom. Also Bill found out that his cousin went to grammar school with Sterling, it is a small world!

Donald Sterling, the ousted 80-year-old majority owner of the Los Angeles Clippers,
is nothing if not memorable. After a fiasco involving a racist tirade
caught on tape, his lifetime ban from the NBA, and the sale of his team
to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Sterling has taken his wife
Shelly to court in a last-ditch effort to save his stake in the $2
billion franchise. On Tuesday, Sterling testified in front of the
courtroom and things quickly spiraled out of control.

Several notable reporters were
in Los Angeles to cover the trial, including ESPN's Ramona Shelburne and
Arash Markazi, the L.A. Times' Bill Plaschke and Nathan Fenno and the
Orange County Register's Dan Woike. Sterling's cross-examination by
veteran barrister Bert Fields was the main show of the evening, which
got weirder and weirder as the day wore on.

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Federal prosecutors suffered the first
defeat in their half-decade-long crackdown on insider trading Tuesday
with the acquittal of
Raj Rajaratnam's
younger brother, a bracing reversal after a string of 81 convictions.

The
loss in some ways represented prosecutors' efforts coming full-circle:
The original investigation into
Rengan Rajaratnam's
trading years ago kick-started a probe into his older sibling
that ultimately uncovered a network of hedge-fund managers and analysts
sharing confidential tips and produced convictions that shook Wall
Street.

It took a federal jury less than
four hours to find Rengan Rajaratnam, 43 years old, not guilty of
taking part in that conspiracy. The acquittal followed a rebuke of parts
of the government's case by the judge who presided over the three-week
trial, and comes as an appeals court is weighing a decision in a
separate case that could raise the bar for prosecutors pursuing such
crimes.